Are You *Sure* I Belong in This Demographic?

This is definitely not my great-uncles' Financial Times.

Today's weekend FT comes with a large glossy 11" x 14" magazine-like object: Financial Times Christmas Unwrapped: How to Spend It Special Christmas Edition, containing prose like:

Chartering a jet for shopping in Paris or Milan or even New York is not as extravagant as you think, says Avril Groom: As recently as the turn of the millennium, the idea of taking a private plane to go shopping seemed nothing more than an outrageous indulgence of the super-rich.... Now such a trip would barely raise an eyebrow among the well-heeled and busy....

[...]

A long weekend in New York on Skyjet's Challenger, which takes 12 passengers, is about £7,000 per head which, given savings on shopping in the United States, the weak dollar, and the approximately £4,000 cost of a scheduled first-class flight, starts to look feasible to a big spender...

I often say that to understand the ads in the New York Times magazine you have to understand that they are aimed not at the average reader but at the average free cash consumption dollar of readers. But this is much more so:

Financial Times - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: How To Spend It magazine is a monthly magazine that usually gets published with the Financial Times Weekend Edition. The glossy large magazine has won the hearts of many Weekend Edition subscribers, with its high detail on the latest in the glitz and glamour of the high-life. Its articles mostly concern high quality products: yachts, mansions, apartments, designs, horlogerie, haute couture, automobiles, fashion advice and columns by important indivduals in the arts in gardening, food, the hotel business, and travel industries. It regularly themes its issues, such as "Travelling Unravelled", "A Passion for Fashion", "Superior Interiors", and its annual "Christmas Unwrapped". How To Spend It has won numerous prizes for being the best newspaper supplement of the year...

Comments

[Rob]

Think of it like those classifieds in the WSJ but with more of a European bent. You know, for those who want a country house in Tuscany instead of a summer house in the Hamptons.

[MobiusKlein]

You may not belong in the demographic, but some folks who read your weblog do, no doubt. Your word of mouth has been valuable to Financial Times. The more the idea is mentioned, the more it becomes standard practice.

[Niall]

As a subscriber to the FT, I have to say that "How to Spend it" makes me want to vomit. I enjoy reading the FT, usually back to front, because it has the best international coverage of any newspaper, it's easy to read the entire thing during the commute to work, and it attracts very good op-eds. However, I question why I subscribe to the newspaper when "How to spend it" is released each month. For the uninitiate, "it" refers to $1 million dollars that you have available to spend on a diamond studded computer or a helicopter ride to a remote ski resort in British Columbia. Not my demographic either and I'm disappointed in myself that I subsidizes such elite garbage.

[Eric de Souza]

If I remember well, the "How to Spend It" supplement began soon after the City of London's big bang. A lot of young bond traders and the like did not know what to do with their sudden riches.

[Alex]

Think of it as a tax you pay to subsidise all those expensive correspondents in the news section. The proliferation of supplements is essentially due to various advances in offset-litho printing and desktop publishing since the mid-80s that dramatically reduced the cost per page of high-gloss, photo-heavy colour pagination. Suddenly, the incremental cost of high-end ad space dived, so it was possible to sell a lot more of it profitably.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

We get the local "Gentry" magazine because of our zip code. We live in the "servants quarters" of a rich neighborhood. It is fun to read about the local rich and famous. If you look closely you will notice they get old, wrinkled and fat just like the rest of us. They also suffer the slings and arrows of outragious fortune same as us. They just have a larger cushion of money to ease the pain. The pain is still there however. When being rich can eliminate all the health risks of life and extend healthy life way beyond what we mere mortals have then I will be jealious.

[s9]

Are you *concerned* about whether you belong in their demographic?

[Gerard MacDonell]

This is why a liberal media bias is virtually impossible, at least if by liberal we mean wanting to redistribute income from rich to poor.

[Jonathan W. King]

Dilbert Dogbert writes:
> We get the local "Gentry" magazine because
> of our zip code. We live in the "servants
> quarters" of a rich neighborhood.

I know exactly how you feel. We just moved to the DC area, and we wound up living in what I can pretty honestly call "the slums of Potomac". The zipcode is 20854, however, and the PER CAPITA income is about $65,000. This was enough for us to start getting a much better grade of junk mail, although I believe the Database That Chooses is aware that we are only living in a townhouse, and thus downregulates the gloriousness of our glossy winnings.

I am, however, about to cash in some frequent flier miles for a subscription to the FT. My guess is that once this kicks in, the Database That Chooses might kick me into the "filthy rich" bin. It's a shame that correlation is not causation, or else I would be picking out my animal-shaped waffle irons and abrand new MacBook Pro right now, must like our host. :-)